Baconsale Episode 83: Harry Podcast and the Category Show

Expecto podcastum! It’s about time Baconsale did a Harry Potter show. We don’t know why it’s taken us this long to discuss the Boy Who Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but we’re doing it now, okay? So back off! Geesh!

This is a category show, so it’s up to Joel and Kent to come up with answers to questions such as:

Who is the most overrated character?

What was the most heartbreaking death in the series?

Which is the best book?

Which is the worst movie?

Plus, you’ll find out which house the Sorting Hat placed each of the guys in and what kind of wand chose them.

According to wikipedia, the source of all truth and knowledge, J.K. Rowling assigned elements that “roughly relate” to each house…. Gryffindor is Fire, Ravenclaw is Air, Hufflepuff is Earth, and Slytherin is Water… I smell a Harry Potter-Avatar the Last Airbender crossover, written by Rowling, Directed by Shamylan, and hated by everyone, on it’s way…. and it smells awful.

Right?! Why did she even try and tie them to an element? What’s the point of that? Honestly you guys were right. She could write a novella about Neville getting a third nipple and she’d sell like 30 million copies.

So, I’m not going to fact check you. I like Harry Potter, but I am not a die hard fan. In fact, in retrospect, I think of the books as candy. The pulled me in, i read them voraciously, but looking back, the stories do not hold up to scrutiny for very long – and that is a weak point – made even weaker when Rowling decides to reveal things about characters and the stories well after the fact, like Neville’s 3rd nipple. They are always so contrived.

So, I am going to use this commenting opportunity to rip on Potter a bit:

First, you hit the nail on the head with Dumbledore being uncommunicative. Seriously, 11 year old kids could not have been put in more danger due to this guy. Second, I completely agree with Kent about Snape. Snape is a jerk and the fact that he is protecting Harry reluctantly makes him even more of a jerk. Instead of killing Hedwig, couldn’t he have just petrificus totalised her? I don’t think Rowling knew that Snape would be so important of a character later on, so he did change through the books.

Now, on to SPEW. You keep bringing it up and I think it is one of the worst parts of the books. It has no reason to be in the book. It makes no sense and it just made me hate Hermione. It felt like Rowling was trying to make a commentary on racism and slavery but she failed utterly. In the end, it is Dobby, the free elf who is the odd ball. It seems as if the other elves really do like being slaves. They find joy in it. It is part of their culture, it is in their genetics. But that seems very racist. SPEW confused me.

Even Dobby himself in rereading the Chamber of Secrets was very dangerous to Harry. The Malfoys weren’t targeting Harry, they were targeting Dumbledore and Ginny why didn’t Dobby try to warn them? Harry was not the target. But as annoying as Dobby was, I did shed a tear when he died. His death was meant to pull at the heart strings and it did.

I also agree with you that JK killed characters unnecessarily only because she was too scared to kill off the main characters.

But my biggest beef with Potter is the world that was created. I cannot understand how a magical world with a huge ministry of magic in England only has one wandmaker. In fact there is only one of each kind of store. It also seems that if you don’t run one of those small stores, you work for the ministry of magic in some capacity. It seems very much like communism. Also, the fact that there is only one school in all of England really bugs me – a lot. I could understand Hogwarts being the most prestigious, but I would expect there would be other smaller schools as well. Also, where do the wizards in France go to school? not beauxbatons. What about the Russian witches? Can’t be Durmstrang.

Speaking of love, I think Rowling also messed up with Ginny. Sure Ginny was more developed in the books, but it she should have refused Harry. It should have taken Harry several books to win Ginny over.

*looks around quizzically* What nerds? As far as I can tell, Crewdutler and I are the only people that even know Baconsale.com has a comment section. Since I’m in agreement with Crewdutler I think we’re pretty safe. She should have killed Ron off, which probably would have saved a few minor characters. Ginny was an awful choice for a love interest, at least they didn’t develop her enough to really be compelling. The world was way too focused on one wizarding school and would have been way more interesting if there were rival English schools to compete against. Besides that, why was there no American school involved in the main book? Seems like an oversight on Rowlings part to not pander to ‘Murica. Just saying, we forked out a lot of cash for that dead horse to get beaten.

The first trilogy of prequels was good. Not great, but good. However, the first installment of the second prequel trilogy leaves a lot to be desired. I got so bugged by a lot of things. I wrote a review on goodreads.

I would go with an Owl over any other animal because an owl is actually useful. An owl is basically the wizarding world equivalent of a cell phone – why would you want to rely on school owls when you could have one of your very own that wouldn’t require payment like the school owls do.

It would have been cool if there had been practical uses for the other animals. The only other one that did anything was Ron’s rat and that’s just because he was an evil, stupid, fat wizard posing as a rat..

Here are my suggestions for practical uses for the other animals. The Toad would be like a miniature safe – it stores small valuables and the valuables can only be retrieved by the toad’s owner’s even if you killed the toad and dissected it, you wouldn’t be able to get the valuables. The cat would serve as a protector by circling you the cat makes it harder for your enemies to approach, which is where the myth about a black cat crossing your path bringing bad luck cones from. The cat doesn’t make it impossible, but if Crabbe were trying to sneak up on Hermione, he might trip or stub his toe. And the rat would be an organizer, you stick him in your desk and your quills will be sharpened and organized, in your drawer and your socks will be folded, basically any small organizational task could be handled by a rat, which is why Ron’s rat is such a bad rat, Pettigrew is a slob so he often makes mistakes or leaves things half done.

I think charms would be my pick too, that or potions. I didn’t really think defense against the dark arts really had any use until Lupin and Moody came into the picture. Even then, it didn’t seem useful unless you were going to be an Auror.

I know right?! Joel likes to think he would want to be an auror, but look at what he does in real life? He writes reviews, performs improve comedy and does a podcast. I’m sorry Joel, but if you aren’t in the CIA, FBI or Special Forces, you can’t say that you would want to be an Auror in the wizarding world. No, you would be ranking wands and cauldrons in Diagon-Alley not fighting dark wizards.

I’ll agree with Joel, an Auror is pretty awesome. I think it would be a blast and honestly they don’t have as big of a recruiting pool as marines or CIA or all that, Aurors are probably happy to recruit any good wizard that isn’t afraid to fight death eaters and things.. I’d listen to a wizard if version of Baconsale though if I was a wizard that is.

Magical Theory – I know it sounds boring, but I would like to learn how to make up a new spell. Do spells always have to have latin roots? What about want movements? How does a flick versus a wave change how a spell is cast? If you can subvocalize the spell (say it in your head rather than outloud) why can’t you “subvocalize” the motion and cast a spell without waving your wand? Maybe that is covered in more advanced charms class, but it seems that most classes deal with only learning spells that have already been invented.

English or Language Arts – Not every class has to be magical. IF they really want to train witches and wizards who can write essays, be reporters for the newspaper, or write books and histories, they need to be taking a class to learn how to write, but I see no evidence of that anywhere in the books. Even creative writing. Even living in a magical world, I would think there would still be a market for fiction.

Wand Making. I mean seriously, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket and hope Olivander keeps making good wands. What happens when he dies or is killed? Who is going to make the wands then? Personally, I would rather have a magic staff than a magic wand.

I also think that every wizard should have a portkey in their pocket that they can touch and be transported back home if they are ever in danger – it would have to be in a pouch or something, but it seems like a simple enough thing to do. It would save a lot of lives. Also, why isn’t the time turner used more. If it can be used for something as trivial as going to extra classes, why can’t it be used to go back and save lives or at least witness crimes in order to catch the crook and have enough evidence to convict? I also think it is quite communistic that the witches and wizards are required to live in Hogwarts to attend. Why can’t kids live at home and come to the school through the flu network each day – or by portkey?

I could keep going in my criticisms of the Potter-verse, but I really did enjoy the books. I know it is difficult to create a magical world that holds up to scrutiny, like any movie or book dealing with time travel, there comes a point when you have to just believe that magic works in some instances and not in other instances. I hope that when they decide to remake the Potter books for the screen, they do so for the small screen. I would much rather see Potter (and really any book series) be turned into a television series rather than a movie.

Here’s a novel idea: DONT INCLUDE TIME TRAVEL IN YOUR MYTHOLOGY. There, problem solved. It creates plot holes and may ruin The Flash… it’s circling the drain guys, I can’t take all the teen soap opera drama that’s seeping in… WHO LET THE ARROW WRITERS GET THEIR HANDS ON THE FLASH?!?! I want names!!

It’s not so much that manipulation of the timeline bugs me. If it’s done intelligently it can work. My problem is that since the timeline change suddenly the show has turned into some weird teen drama where everyone talks about their feelings… if felicity Smoak starts being a regular I will never watch it again. I hate her, and I hate Arrow. Used to love it, now it’s awful.

I have been debating providing my response for “Most Overrated Character” for some time now, and I think it’s time for me to just come out and say it. I think the most overrated Harry Potter character is…… wait for it………Harry Potter.

Seriously. He’s not that great. He’s not very smart. He stunk at magic – sure he could do a Patronus at a young age, but he would never have survived the Tri-Wizard Cup without other people cheating for him. And even then, he is always stumbling through the plot and accidentally winning or beating the bad guy. Even him being “the boy who lived” was his mom’s doing, not his. When Snape was attempting to teach him Occlumency, Harry resisted and fought Snape, and even invaded Snape’s privacy and then got mad and complained to Dumbledore that Snape wasn’t teaching him anymore. Ron and Hermione were much more important in figuring things out. Harry only destroyed one Horcrux and that was even before they knew about Horcruxes and that was only because Faux the Phoenix was there to help him.

I’m not saying Harry isn’t a good character. I just think he is completely overrated.

Harry Potter is the Michael Cera of wizards. He just gets thrown into things way over his head and somehow comes out on top. He is awkward while doing it, and is awkward after doing it. Totally unqualified to have been made the Seeker for Gryffindor in his first year. I’m with you, he got handed way too many opportunities for doing nothing but having a scar on his head…. BTW I’m a Slytherin… So him getting opportunities handed to them without having gone through the work pisses me off a bit. Ambition should be rewarded with opportunity, it shouldn’t be given just because of a stupid scar on your head.

On another note, while I don’t have the time to write, I think it would be an interesting project to write a couple alternative Harry Potter books that go down different paths at crucial decision points. The first has to do with Voldemort’s decision to go after the Potter’s instead of the Longbottoms. What would the books be like if Neville was the focus?

The other is when Harry puts the sorting hat on and the hat almost puts him in Slytherine. The hat said he would be equally good in both houses. Just imagine how the stories could have gone. I’m not saying Harry would have turned evil, because I don’t think that the house makes the wizard if it did, they should have just closed down Slytherine house long ago. But it would have made for a bigger story arc rather than being put in the “best” house, he gets put in the “worst”.